Just Once, Or So the Legend Goes
by thesunshinekid
Summary: Charlie DeMarco did not want to go to California. (Or, a study in how two beautiful screwed up creatures ended up here).
1. The Man, The Myth

Charlie DeMarco did not want to go to California.

She hated the sun. She hated preppy girls. She hated yoga and juice cleanses and kale. She did not want to go to California and work long days and even longer nights in trucks and hotel rooms and on the carpal-tunnel end of a laptop with some overgrown frat-agents. Charlie was from Brooklyn. Charlie was tough.

But one of her guys, Slimy (do not ask) had shown up in a Southern California drug trafficking racket and now she had to go and share Intel or something with one Special Agent Paul Briggs. Charlie had been told to wait at arrivals for Paul Briggs to come and pick her up.

Oh, she had heard all about Paul Briggs. She had heard of the stats, heard of the arrests. He had infiltrated the Sinaloa Cartel and done some serious damage to one of their shipping lines. He had bedded half the female agents in the Southern California Bureau HQ, if the rumors were true.

She was not so easily overawed. She had her own reputation back in New York to keep clean. Falling in with the likes of Agent Briggs (unconventional, creative, risk-taker, womanizer) wasn't really an option. Not that she was so straight-laced herself, but she had worked hard for the respect she had in Brooklyn and she wasn't willing to jeopardize that.

She had her fair share of victories, had been her team's go-to gal for cover identities, but this was a whole different kettle of fish. Just looking around she felt self-conscious about the colors in her make up kit. Damn these people were tan.

Standing under the stinky, prickly-hot Los Angeles sun, Charlie crossed her fingers that there were other FBI agents on the team to divide the burden. She was excited to see him work, yes, to get her fingers dirty with the SoCal drug trade, but she knew she was not going to come off looking like the better agent of the two, and damned if she would let him know that. Charlie had met agents like that before - superstars, thought the world only existed because they kept saving it from extinction. God forbid she let him think she would be another fawning acolyte.

A beat up rust-orange Bronco pulled up in front of her. A dark-skinned man with aviators and the smile of a much younger man turned to her.

"You must be Demarco."

Strike that. A man with the smile of a much younger, gorgeous, entirely kissable man. Shit.

"Charlie." She corrected him. The only person who called her Demarco was her control officer, and only when pissed (both angrily and drunkenly, which lately had been pretty much always).

"Call me Briggs."

"Sure thing, sugar," she said, swinging her duffle into the back and hopping up into the cab. He pulled away from the curb and into traffic.

"You're late," she said, as an awkward introduction to conversation. Good lord, the heat must be getting to her.

"Accident on the 405." He said, by way of explanation.

See, this was the exact thing she couldn't stand. "Do people seriously talk like that?" She asked, not a little snarky.

He chuckled, "Eh, you'll be one of us in no time."

Doubt that.

"So," She said, putting her feet up on his dashboard. "Can you tell me what I'm doing here?"

"We picked up your Mr. Slimy on the comm intercepts. Your files are great but I hear your brain is better."

Oh, he was a flirt.

The Bureau put her up in a crappy, questionable hotel, but it was close to the beach and close to the rest of the team and so she spent as little time in the likely bedbug-infested room as possible, and much more in the sun.

Maybe this was why Californians were all so tan. It wasn't that Charlie didn't like the sun, it's just that after five hours of stakeout in Paul's ugly ass truck, which first stank of Hector's (excellent tacos) and then later stank of post-Hector's flatulence (worth it, perhaps, on a day not spent in such tight quarters), she needed the sun. She wondered not a few times if this was how flowers felt in the morning, raising their petal-y arms to the sky and drinking it in.

Every time she thought that, she found herself physically shaking her head as if to get the hippy out of her. It must be contagious.

Charlie had realized that there was only so long she could sit in Briggs jalopy old truck without wanting to jump out and punch something. Maybe the truck. The bench had a spring poking out on the left side of the passenger seat, and the only comfortable option was to fold herself up by the door. She's taken to putting her feet up on the dashboard – Briggs didn't mind, though sometimes he'd take the chance to tickle them (she was wearing flip-flops these days, so sue her – it's hot in LA).

There was a half-drunk root beer in the single usable cup holder, and taco wrappers littering the floor. It looked like there might be a hole in the floor – occasionally the wrappers disappear on the road and these federal agents aren't tossing them out the window, and she really doubted Briggs was cleaning them out every night.

The car says a lot about Paul Briggs. He was a strange mix of passion and nonchalance. The truck, Agent Orange, was a work of art, he told her, and "it gets me where I needs to be," and Charlie tried not to mull over the implications of that too much.

He certainly did fit in with the hipster beach crowd. He wore aviators and t-shirts that were so old and so soft she'd contemplated stealing them. He wore a Buddhist amulet – just subtle enough to indicate that he cared about something, all zen and the universe – without violent drug-dealing criminals taking him too seriously.

They'd been watching this house every day for a week, and Charlie was convinced there had gotta be a better use of their time, but Paul has enough patience for the task and his unwilling partner. Eventually, it paid off; Slimy's brother-in-law slinked out of the house at dusk, a half-empty pack of cigarettes in his hand, and jangling car keys swinging from his back pocket. By the time Slimy's boy had driven to the end of the block, Agent Orange was creeping, loudly, behind. Briggs turned up the music – some beach boys knockoff band – and took her hand, leaning back against the seat. To any passersby, they are a couple out for an evening drive. Not worth a second glance.

They made it to the freeway entrance and Paul drops her hand, practically yanking on the gear lever, and suddenly the chase is on. The car was ancient and usually coughing and spluttering, but now it seemed to be in its element, as is Paul who hadn't said a word through this whole exchange. They follow their man to a bank – a little local credit union type – and watch as he wanders in with a bit of a swagger, then Charlie jumped out to plant a tracker on the bottom of his Hyundai. Their guy wandered back out with a security bag.

Charlie was tempted to drop it there – they had the tracker, and keeping up in Agent Orange is a difficult task, not the least because it's a bit of a distinct car, but Paul insisted.

"We've come so far," he said, taking a sip of now-lukewarm root beer while they trail the guy to a bar. That's one way to spend your hard-earned illegal cash, Charlie thought.

It was easy to play a slightly drunk couple in a bar. Their guy is apparently pretty bad at this being-a-criminal-thing, not noticing that they had been following him for hours now.

They hang around the bar for maybe an hour, pretending to get very wasted off a single shitty beer, and playing pool. Paul placed his hand on her shoulder as she lined up a shot, ostensibly an intimate gesture but she could feel him watching, down toward the other end of the table.

Seconds later their guy is just walking by, and then Paul is punching him in the face, in the gut, yelling, cursing. Not a minute goes by before Paul has reconstructed the perps face and they've both been kicked out of the dive.

"What the hell was that?"

"Got a couple of bills out of his jacket. And a good look at the guys face." Paul explains.

"Destroyed the guys face," Charlie counters. "I don't like having to explain that to your boss."

"Explain what?" Paul responded. "The guy threw a punch. I was defending myself and my partner."

She gave him an "Oh really?" eyebrow raise.

"You wanna help me trace these counterfeits, or you wanna tattle on me to the bureau?"

It's not till later that Charlie is shocked by how easy the decision was.

One morning, she got a text from Paul with the name of a beach and instructions to park "on the road, past lifeguard house 3, do not pay for parking" and it still boggled her mind that people really conversed like that, but she followed instructions, and tucked her gun into her waistband, assuming this was going to be the weirdest midday stakeout she'd been invited to (and she'd been to some doozies).

About halfway down the beach toward the water, she found Paul, wetsuit clad, standing next to two surfboards, looking so pleased with himself, a goofy grin lighting up under his aviators.

"No perp?" She asked. She could see where this was going, and she didn't like it.

"No."

"Then what the hell am I doing here?"

"I'm teaching you to surf."

Oh my God… this guy just… "What makes you think I don't know how to surf?"

"Sweetheart, when was the last time you went to the beach?"

"Yesterday." They'd followed Slimy's second-hand guy out here all the way to Malibu.

"For fun." He emphasized.

Charlie didn't answer. She didn't really need to. Paul Briggs had this way of seeing right through people's excuses and fronts. It was great when you were a criminal; not so great when you were a colleague.

"Is this…" Charlie searched for the right word, "appropriate?"

"Surfing on a beach? Nah, we're gonna do it in the water."

Not what I meant. "After school activities." She clarified.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

And that, it turned out, was the fundamental difference between the boss that was driving her up the wall back in New York, and the partner that had a boyfriend - then didn't have a boyfriend - and then had a boyfriend again and to be honest Charlie had stopped saying yes to post-shift drinks because she'd much rather sit at home with cheap beer and a Rangers game than spend another second with her colleagues - and these agents in California, most of whom Charlie actually liked

Maybe she was going soft.

"Alright." She said. "But I'm not dressed for the beach."

Paul tossed her a wetsuit. Charlie looked at it, curious; even she could see this was a quality brand, and it would fit her. "Whose suit am I stealing?"

"My ex's," he said, and she decided not to follow that one up.

And it turned out that Charlie wasn't so bad at surfing. The water was frigidly cold, but Paul was helpful, and didn't even try to flirt with her that much considering how skintight the wetsuit was, and even though she was pummeled by the waves and her own instability more than a few times, she scrambled up the beach an hour later feeling better, without having realized that she needed to feel better in the first place.

Paul flopped onto a towel next to her, pulling his wetsuit down halfway and groaning. "Nothing like it, huh?"

"I guess not." It was true, but she was a bit reluctant to give him that win. "But I've never been hit by a truck, so I can't be sure."

At least he had the good nature to laugh. "You did pretty well for yourself out there."

Charlie would have been content to lie in the sun for a little while, but her erstwhile partner had different plans.

"So, Chuck," he chuckled and she cringed, "care to explain what, exactly, is your beef with me?"

"Huh?"

"Girl, you have quite some chip on your shoulder."

Charlie grunted and purposely stared a little too close at the sun for a while. Not a conversation she wanted to have right now.

"I have to go back to New York eventually." She said, as if that explained anything.

"And?"

"I guess I don't want to become a fan of California."

"That's great and all, but I get the feeling there's something more specific going on. About me."

"Wow, you think so well of yourself, huh?" She countered, and he flinched. Huh.

"That's the sort of thing I'm talking about."

Charlie was tempted to resist, to be snarky again, but knew it would be fruitless. "You have a reputation. And I've got to go back to New York with mine intact."

She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't the guffawing laugh that she got.

"What?!" Maybe she was a little hurt.

"Catherine Demarco," he said, sitting up and looking at her straight.

"Don't call me Catherine."

He flashed her that million-watt smile "I promise, you don't have a thing to worry about from me."

"You sure about that?"

"It's just a reputation, hon," he said, and there was something in it - the way he wouldn't look at her (in his ex's wetsuit, she remembered). "We both do what we gotta do to get people to buy into the story, right?"

She pretended like his guard hadn't dropped, "gets you places in HQ, right?"

"All sorts of places." He grinned.

Slimy was pretty easy to take down in the end; he was out of his depth in Southern California's endless networks of cartels and gangs and small criminal enterprises (and large criminal enterprises). Charlie was surprised to find that she was going to miss California. Briggs was cool - very smooth with the ladies, very easy on the eyes - but also very good at his job, and his brain worked quickly, coming up with solutions to problems she hadn't even anticipated yet.

They sat, feet in the sand and a bottle of rum between them (her per diem was out and he claimed to be "federal broke"), eating beach cheese fries and watching the sun set over the waves of the beach near his safe house.

"Looking forward to getting back to your comfy New York digs?" He asked, leaning back on his arm and tossing her a casual, easygoing smile.

"You mean my cramped, old, fight-with-the-landlord, piss-poor-heating, hole-in-the-wall?" She laughed and took a swig of the rum. "Oh, I've been spoiled gthese past few weeks."

"You like it out here?" He asked.

She leaned back to join him and nodded. "Didn't think I was gonna - but the company is good."

"Now what do you mean by that?" She could see that he was teasing, but she felt her chest tighten a bit anyway.

"No alcoholic boss breathing down my neck. No obligatory Sunday family dinners. And it's good work out here, ya know?"

Paul nodded and took the bottle from her.

She fell silent, watching the waves for a moment. She truly had enjoyed the work - it had been stressful, crazy, dangerous, and damn near more fun than she had in years. How did that happen? This place had been everything she was dreading and now she was dreading leaving it behind. It turned out the sun and the beach and flip-flops suited her.

They say that great minds think alike (and fools seldom differ), and so she should not have been surprised when Briggs broke the silence. "Ya know, we've got this safehouse for local undercovers, and we could use another bureau agent repping in there."

It would mean she didn't to go back. Better; it would mean she didn't have to leave.

"I barely met you, and you're already asking me to move in with you?"

He grinned. "Yes, I guess I am."

It turned out that she was the third one into the house. Right now, it was just Briggs and a grouchy ICE agent named Jakes, and it was bachelor central. No furniture beyond a beer-stained couch, nothing in the fridge, just surfboards, wax, and beer bottles spread out over the living room floor.

"This is awful." She found herself stopped in the foyer. Truly disgusting.

"All the furniture is holed up in evidence," Jakes (Dale Jakes - DJ, as he introduced himself) explained. "We're making do."

"I lived in nicer places in college."

"Well, on a federal paycheck…" Briggs drifted off.

"Well, we've got to at least make it livable." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Show me to my room. Paul, bring my bag."

"It's Briggs- " he protested but Charlie was already heading up the stairs.

Her room had a bed - that was good - but not much else. It had a utilitarian set of sheets - Briggs' spares, apparently - and a plastic set of college-dorm drawers that had definitely seen better days.

She must have been making a face, because Briggs' commented, "I'm sure you'll make it your own."

That night, she sat with her new housemates around a "welcome" bonfire, beers in hand with a hearty dinner of tortilla chips and guacamole ("It's all we have," Paul had explained, and she hadn't even tried to hide her eye roll).

"So," Jakes asked, fire flickering in his eyes - and a few beers more she would have been enchanted by it. "Tell me what brings you here to sunny Southern California, Agent Demarco."

She took a sip of her beer - ugh, cheap IPA - and sat back against a rock. "Agent Superstar over here asked me to move in with him and I was just tripping all over my feet to say yes."

Jakes raised his eyebrows. Oops, maybe too much sass right there for so little beer. "Paul roped you in?"

"We worked a case together," she said. "Lord knows why he wanted me to stick around."

"Any words from Agent Superstar here?"

Paul's voice traveled over the flames, where she could barely see him in the dark. "I heard plenty of good things about the girl who brought down the Italian Undertaker" - Slimy's father, oddly enough - "and we need good people in this house."

She shook her finger at him. "Wasn't no girl that took him down."

She saw his head move, eyes sparkling at her over his bottle. "Oh, I can see that."

She took a sip from her own. Cool as a cucumber. Just because she agreed to move into his house didn't mean she was moving into his room. No matter how kissable he looked right now.

Paul continued. "Needed another FBI agent in the house, and Demarco wanted some more of the beach. So here she is."

Later that night, as she dumped the remnants of tortilla chips and guac in the kitchen, she pretended not to hear Jakes stop Paul in the foyer.

"Really, man, her? Last time..."

Paul's voice was quiet, but she could have sworn he said, "It's not like that."

Lying in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, Charlie wondered why she was disappointed instead of relieved.


	2. Katie and Eric

**Chapter Two:**

 **Katie and Eric**

They had an easy camaraderie. He called her Chuck, she called him Paul. On her days off he plied her with In-N-Out Burger, and they drove for miles around Southern California, so she could learn the streets, the lay of the land - the gang territories, the culture, the slang.

She mocked his "zentensity" and he mocked her Brooklyn-Italian Mama-bear attitude. She couldn't help it; that house needed some desperate help. No one could live in that kind of squalor.

She tagged along behind Briggs and DJ to the local, playing wing-girl. Some nights when pickings were slim, they drank together and stumbled home, laughing, usually falling asleep in a tangled pile on the (new) couch, too tired and disoriented to get upstairs.

Once, on a late night stakeout, they knew the idiot was making a deal but had nothing strong enough for a warrant. Stake outs like this were the worst; boring, and the car began to stink of hot dog remnants and the butt ends of her cigarettes, the only station Paul's shitty truck could get out there was Mariachi and the AC was broken.

Quantico had trained her for all kinds of torture, but not this particular brand of cop-work in the California summer. Paul took things into his own hands, buttoning up his shirt and stepping out of the car.

"What are you doing?"

"Making shit happen. You coming?"

And if for no other reason than to get the hell out of that car, she agreed

"Zip up your jacket," he instructed.

Charlie did as told. She had an inkling where he was going with this. She wasn't sure she liked it.

Paul took confident strides up the front walk and if there was a brash way to ring a doorbell, he did it.

The door opened. "Have you heard about Jesus Christ?-"

The door slammed, but not before the cloud of meth-laced smoke escaped. It was all they needed.

Back at HQ, outside the interrogation room, Charlie stopped him. "So, about our report?"

"About that dopehead stumbling around on the front lawn that we just booked on possession with intent?"

She should have learned by now, she thought, as Paul sauntered into the interrogation room. Clarke, his control officer, came up behind her.

She cleared her throat to speak, but he raised a hand to stop her.

"Plausible deniability. Agent Briggs is already on my shit list and the last thing any of us needs is more paperwork."

Perhaps she would add that to the house rules.

Sometimes, Paul would sneak into her room at shit-o'clock in the morning sit next to her on the bed, playing games on his phone until she woke up, and then dragging her down the beach for some surfing. Sometimes, Charlie would make an extra plate of food for dinner and leave it next to a paperwork-absorbed Briggs during long nights of research and recon. He wouldn't look up or acknowledge the offering, but the next morning all of the dishes were clean, and so was her car. They ganged up on DJ when it came time to watch TV, and when they had to check in with their handlers at HQ, they spent the hour-long ride home bitching about Clarke and his shit list and his stank face whenever Paul bent the rules just a little further.

If you had asked Charlie who her closest friends were, she would have said her roommates. If you had pressed her, she would have said Paul. Hands down, no one in California knew her better.

Hell, no one in New York had ever known her better.

By the time Lauren and Donnie moved in - DEA agents, both - their rooms were actually decorated and welcoming, the fridge was stocked, and Charlie had created a fully-functioning chore wheel, which amazingly, her roommates abided by. Small price to pay, Briggs told her, to get her to make more of that Sauce.

The pair of them had been gathering intel on a low-level dealer named Quinn - paranoid as fuck and difficult to get into his inner circle, but well-connected. It was her first long-term cover at Graceland. They thought they had found a way in, an addicted mess named Roy, whom they had befriended far too easily.

They were Katie and Eric, H users with a side-gig in dealing to fund their own habit. Sitting in front of Roy, faking high, getting way more information than they had ever expected from this meet, it was way too easy, Charlie thought. Way too easy.

"So hey, man," Paul - Eric - began, drawling like he was stoned. "You know a guy good for this shit?"

"Oh yeah," Roy said, leaning forward a bit too eagerly. "You want Q. Q is your guy."

Yes, Charlie thought, yes they wanted Q. Keep talking. "How do we meet this Q?"

"Dude, let me take you to a part-ay." (She winced. He seriously said that.)

"Lets do it, man." Paul responded, and she figured she was just along for the ride.

Roy had told them that Quinn was a bit "weird about new people," which was an understatement. When they got to the "part-ay," there was no way they were even getting into the house, even with a guy on the inner circle.

"Quinn is not doing business tonight," a beefy black guy said, pushing them away from the door.

"But we just want to part-ay." Charlie hung on to Paul, a little off-kilter, and tried not to gag on the smell emanating from the open door. "Can't we just have a good time?"

She felt Paul's hand on her arm, steadying her. "Yeah man, we just heard there was a killer vibe."

She was pretty certain that was gibberish, but it must have been some unusual Southern California dialect she hadn't picked up yet, because it worked; the thug-bodyguard let them in.

Once they were in, of course, they had to keep up the act - playing stoned, hanging all over each other, and _listening_. No deals going down tonight - the guy was right - and they didn't even get to see the elusive Quinn. But they heard plenty. Heard about the "dope shit he's got," heard about Marcus, the guy he offed recently (accounts were varied, though consensus seemed to be that Marcus acted a little too suspiciously for his paranoid boss), heard about how "fucked up" Roy got at his last party.

Paul was getting her a red cup of whatever that green slosh was when she found herself approached by a tall skinny meth head, with buggy eyes and a creepy smile.

"Hey pretty," he started.

"Hey," she looked away. One of the first things she had learned about California - you couldn't just ignore people, they way she blatantly ignored the subway panhandlers and sidewalk evangelists of New York. You had to at least acknowledge them, if not actively engage.

"You want to fuck?"

Well, he wasted no time.

"Man," she spoke clearer than she had been earlier, lest he think her wasted enough to be taken advantage of, "I'm not really into it."

"Huh?" He looked surprised, but his shock soon morphed into anger. "You don't want any tonight? Because with a face like that you're not going to get any."

Paul had been snaking his way back, balancing a cup of something that looked light frozen cough syrup with the news that Quinn wasn't even at the party, when he overheard this tidbit. He stepped in - all six feet two inches of him, broad and imposing - pulled an arm around her shoulder, and planted a big one right on her lips. "That's because tonight, she's fucking me."

It was fun to put on Katie - her grungy sweat pants, her black and blue track marks - and slur and slide her way through their operations. She would hang all over Eric - and he would paw at her inappropriately when they played high. And it was fine, because it was all a game, all for the cover. At home, when the tattered jogging pants and fake bruises were gone, they were just Charlie and Paul - he would crunch tortilla chips noisily in her ear; she would make snide comments about his jalopy truck; he would laugh at her when she fell off her surfboard; she would goad him into ever more outlandish pick-up lines at the Drop with the vague promise of picking up the tab.

She didn't know how it happened really, but at some point, probably while it was 2am and they had a bit too much to drink and they were burying Jakes ridiculous new overpriced Rainbow brand leather flip-flops out on the beach, tripping over each other and singing along to the Beach Boys off-key, she realized she had gained a best friend.

The next morning, when Jakes discovered his sandals missing and Charlie nursed her hangover with some steaming hot coffee, Paul slid down next to her at the breakfast bar and whispered in her ear, "Partners in crime, huh?"

"Partners in crime-prevention, you mean?" She murmured back, biting the corner of her lip (maybe she was flirting, a little).

"Nah, we're too bad for that."

She always did wonder what he meant by that.

It took a year - a full freaking year - but eventually Quinn got them in at Boris's. It required a bit of creativity, some questionable, not exactly law-abiding maneuvers, but they got in at Mr. Sabia's, too. And then they took down a whole distribution network, so that was something. It had been a busy year - an exhausting year - and by the end of it Charlie didn't even really remember why she had wanted to dislike California, these agents.

They were all trooping over to the Drop to celebrate the bust - "Drinks on me!" Paul had cried, almost giddy, as they left the house. She had smiled so wide; for a guy that had the desk-jockeys staring in awe any time he walked - no, swaggered - into the bureau headquarters, he was a bit of a kid, a bit of a dork.

She had run back into the house to change her shoes into some more practical flip-flops, ("Who's a Valley-girl now?" Johnny, the newest housemate and a Long Beach native, had laughed) and had emerged to find Jakes hanging back, sitting on the tail of her jeep.

"Charlie, sweetheart, I gotta talk to you."

"Shoot," she said, joining him.

Dale sighed; she could see him struggling; of all her roommates, he was the most reticent, so when he spoke he didn't want to waste words.

"Just, be careful, okay?"

It seemed vague and oddly over-protective and she couldn't quite see where he was coming from. "Huh?"

Jakes squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose as if this was painful for him. "Everyone can see it, ya know?"

"Still way over my head, DJ." She pulled his hand away from his face. "Cut the bullshit."

DJ sighed. "It's pretty obvious that you and Briggs have it bad for each other. Ok? And now that you're done being Katie and Eric all day... "

Charlie considered denying this but wanted beer and friends and figured prolonging the conversation wouldn't help. "And?"

"Just, be careful." He said. "With Paul," he added, as if she had missed that bit.

"He's a grown-ass man." She said.

"You didn't see him… after..." Right. The ex.

"So he went through a bad break-up - "

"Forget it." DJ said, walking off. "You're a grown-ass woman; the two of you can make your own mistakes."

There was a lot of alcohol flowing and a lot of flirting and Lauren and Donnie were totally making out in front of them (and maybe Charlie glared at DJ for shrugging and looking the other way). Eventually Paul dragged Charlie and DJ and Johnny off for a bonfire on the beach because it was a nice night and they were just drunk enough that sleep felt a million hours away. They laughed a bit too hard, kicked sand at each other. A couple of beers more and DJ grouched his way off to bed and Johnny said something about early morning surf, and that left Paul and Charlie to clean up the mess. They found themselves lounging over the rocks at their campfire spot, passing a bottle of rum back and forth and confessing stupid shit to each other. Their default way to be together, it seemed.

"I once dated a guy that thought he could do magic."

"Could he?"

"Not in the sack, he couldn't!" She laughed a bit too obviously, too drunkenly, and she could feel Paul's eyes on her.

"I once told a girl I was an astronaut."

"Did she sleep with you?"

"Nah, she didn't buy it."

"Some day, you'll make that one stick."

"Like hell, you know I will." Paul passed her the bottle. "You gotten any lately?"

"Rum?" She asked, but wiggled her eyebrows anyway.

He laughed. "Lots and lots of rum."

"Rum for everyone!" She spread her arms out and yelled like Oprah, hitting him in the face.

"Oopfh!" He slapped a hand over his nose.

"Oh my gosh!" Charlie leaned over, pulling his hand away and examining it. "Are you alright?"

Paul looked up at her and she could see the mischief in his eyes. "I will be if you kiss it all better."

She did, a quick peck on the tip of his nose just to call his bluff.

"Nah," he pulled her back to him. "That's not the spot. A little lower."

She planted a peck on his chin. "There?"

"Mmm…" He shook his head, holding her close enough that she could feel the movement in the air in front of her.

"There?"

Eric and Katie were sloppy and touchy-feely, like PDA-hungry teenagers desperate to taste each other just one more time before their parents got home.

Paul and Charlie were all flames and heat and crackling tension, a slow burn that had been building for a year. They might have broken a lamp shade at some point. They definitely lost his socks.

And then they were still. Charlie found herself looking at Paul from the tangle of sheets and limbs, and he was smiling at her - and a part of her remembered what DJ said, a part of her wondered what he was smiling at - was it the smile of victory, of a man who just took down a major California drug channel, who was lying in bed next to his best friend? Was it the smile of a man who just slept with his partner, who just added another notch to his bedpost?

She decided not to think about this. Not while he was lying next to her.

In the morning, exhausted and hungover and reeling, they stood with Paul's bedroom door cracked, watching for movement in the hallway before Charlie sneaked back to her own room. It was quiet, and with the morning light seeping through the blinds, Paul stole one last kiss.

And that was it.


	3. The Astronaut

**Chapter Three:**

The Astronaut

If their housemates knew what had happened between them, no one said anything - probably because Lauren and Donnie were too busy being obvious and they were all too busy trying to find ways not to make fun of them for it - and life continued on as before. Maybe Charlie didn't bother so much with the Rum (and maybe these days that was Paul's breakfast beverage of choice) and maybe he might ask Donnie to surf first before he tried to rouse her from bed (generally, she appreciated that), and maybe she stopped playing footsie with him during debriefings at the bureau, but nothing much else changed.

They drifted on to their separate cases, this time using their own names as covers (it had come way too close on way too many occasions, with Paul's - no, Eric's - mouth on hers and a person of interest in the investigation looking on, and what was his - her - whose? - name again?), and they weren't spending nearly every waking hour in each others breathing space and so it was fine.

There was a night, at the Drop, beer and pool tables and laughing as usual, and she pointed out a curly redhead across the bar.

"Her," she said. "She's had her eye on you all night."

Paul turned to look. "Hmm… I definitely could."

"You definitely should." Charlie corrected. "How long has it been now?"

"One month and three days." Paul flashed her that cat-got-the canary grin because she knew exactly what happened one month and three days ago.

"Stop." She gave him a playful shove. "What's your in?"

"I could go pilot. It's pretty standard."

"But not very ambitious."

"I used photographer too recently."

"I thought you said it had been over a month?"

"I don't like to cycle around that quickly. And it's still not very good."

Charlie thought for a second. "I bet she'd buy it."

Paul looked at her, "It? The photographer?"

Charlie shook her head. Realization flickered across Paul's face.

"The astronaut? Naw, I don't know if I could pull that off?"

"Never picked you for the self-doubt type."

"Would you buy the astronaut line?" He asked.

"No, but that's because I've seen you lie. Seriously, try it."

"Maybe."

"What's the worst that can happen?" Charlie was goading him. She really wanted him to get back into the game. He had to, because then their "thing" would be done with.

"You really wanna see me strike out, huh?"

"Go get her, cowboy."

"That's astronaut," he smiled, tipped a fake hat, and swaggered across the bar.

DJ slid in next to her. "That was benevolent of you."

"You haven't been doing paperwork with him the past week. He needs to get laid."

DJ raised an eyebrow. "Sure."

She didn't see Paul again until he stumbled in the next morning in last nights jeans and dirty t-shirt while she was frying up an omelet for her own hungover self. He pulled a beer from the fridge and set one down in front of her. "I owe you, like, a month of drinks."

She smiled. "Made it stick?"

"Oh this astronaut did much more than-"

She stopped him. "I don't want to hear it. Feel free to buy me all the drinks you want."

Charlie could feel her cheeks reddening and she knew she had been smiling too much but she couldn't help it. The man across from her wiggled his eyebrows and spoke with his hands.

"And then he says, What do you mean the monkey doesn't come free?"

She couldn't actually tell you why the monkey might have come free in the first place, only half listening to the man, much more interested in watching him, his exuberance and positivity. A breath of fresh air from the normal doom and gloom of her life at Graceland, where everyone was a criminal and everyone was lying.

"Sounds crazy," she said, still smiling too much.

"Oh, let me tell you," he shook his head. "That day was insane. But how about you? How is work going?"

Charlie had told him that she was a nanny for a rather demanding married lawyer and stockbroker, and he had bought it, so far. It accounted for her ridiculous hours and if the kids she babysat were named "Johnny" and "Dale," who could blame her?

"Oh those boys… getting up to all sorts of trouble. You know how that age is." (They were six and eight, by the way.)

He chuckled. "I can imagine. You must have the patience of a saint."

His name was Manny and he was tall and lean owned a small gym. He was perfect - a good guy (she'd checked), clean, well-spoken and knew how to treat a girl right. Smoking hot to boot. She'd lucked out and still wasn't entirely certain what he saw in her - her track record wasn't so stellar and before moving to California she'd begun to concede that maybe she was a magnet for sleazeballs. But maybe she just hadn't met the right kind of guy yet.

Manny was one of those "right guys" - which was a problem, because she was an undercover FBI agent, and very much not the right girl. They'd been on three dates now and as they sat, making irrelevant small talk over fish tacos and beer, she knew he was getting antsy; she hadn't slept with him yet.

She couldn't bring herself to do it. Not that she didn't need it; au contraire, she needed to shake the spectre of Paul Briggs - it had been far too long - and if she didn't soon she might as well just throw out the nice undies and buy herself a cat. But it just wasn't fair to Manny. She couldn't give him more than a night - and he was a great guy, he deserved so much more.

On days like this, Charlie hated being an undercover agent.

She left while he was in the bathroom, and went straight to the Drop, where she knew her housemates would be drinking and trying too hard, and told them to find her an easy one for that night because her date had been a mess. If they didn't buy it, they didn't let on, and she got it out of her system between the slightly-grungy sheets of a tanned surfer who smelled too strongly of pot and whose blonde hair was too greasy for her hands.

The next day, when Charlie plopped her hungover ass down at the kitchen bar stool with a bowl of Frosted Flakes, Paul walked in, poured her a mug of coffee and picked up a bottle of rum for himself, sitting down next to her.

"What." She snapped. She still felt a little dirty, and his presence felt like an ugly reminder.

"She died."

"Who, the redhead?" That had been like, a month ago. What was he trying to tell her? If this was a confession, she would need more coffee.

"My ex." He clarified. "Lisa."

"Oh."

"We had another safe house - the Estate. It was the prototype for this place... But there was a fire."

Paul's face was a rock, indecipherable - the thing that made him the best agent and the best liar, and if it weren't for the bags under his eyes, just a little larger than usual for a guy who never missed an opportunity to sleep in, she wouldn't have known that he'd spent all night agonizing over those two words. _She died._

"Sometimes," he said, with a swig of rum, "I hate being an undercover agent."

Charlie should have felt privileged that he had told her but now she just felt a little dirtier.

Lisa. The one DJ had been giving them both the stink-eye over for months, as if their flirting was some sort of offense. Lisa - the ex. Correction: not an ex; a dead girlfriend.

He taught her to surf in his dead girlfriend's wetsuit. The one she still used, hanging up outside the garage right now.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because we're partners," he kissed her forehead, "and it sucks for me too."

When Paige first moved in, Lauren and Charlie took her out to a classy little tapas place in Los Feliz, told her the house rules and the way things really worked between the agencies.

"The thing with the washer - you've got to jiggle the knob a little."

"Street parking is a bit of a nightmare because of the beach. If you can't get on the driveway, try two blocks south. It's almost never busy there."

"There's only one ICE agent in the house; we try not to give him too much shit about it. Don't steal his food."

"But not too little shit, either. Can't be let him getting a big head."

"Those dreads though…"

"Charlie takes the chore wheel as gospel. She once hid Johnny's surfboard and keys until he cleaned all the toilets."

"I do what I need to maintain order."

"Don't touch the rum in the kitchen. It's Paul's. There's a stash in the linen cupboard for cocktail-related emergencies. Don't worry, Paul Briggs might be able to take down half a cartel in a days' work, but he doesn't even know we have a linen cupboard."

In return, Paige regaled them with tales of busts gone wrong out in Austin, of the music scene and the occasional difficulty in distinguishing a perp from a run-of-the-mill weirdo.

"So, these handsome men in our house...' Paige asked, "I mean, what are they like?"

"Don't get involved," Charlie warned.

"She knows what she's talking about," Lauren piped up.

Charlie fixed her with a death glare. "Pot. Kettle."

Lauren took another sip of her margarita and turned her back to Charlie, directly addressing Paige. "Donny is off the market. DJ is grumpy as shit on a good day. Paul is all hung up on his ex."

It was vague, but Charlie was fairly certain Lauren was talking about her. Lauren didn't know about Paul's dead girlfriend; he had barely ever mentioned her to Charlie, and she was his partner.

"Never bring up the ex." Charlie added, for safety.

"And the dating scene around here?" Paige asked. She would have had no way of knowing; she'd never worked a long term cover like this.

"Look," Charlie explained. "It's not that we can't date. We just can't get involved."

"I see," Paige said, but clearly a little skeptical.

"They wouldn't really get to know the real you," Charlie said. "What's the point?"

Without realizing it, she had been talking about all of the men in bars and all of the beds and all of the drunken kisses that weren't her arrogant, stubbly, gorgeous partner.

Maybe once or twice (or three, or four times… ), it would be two am and everyone else would have drifted to bed while Charlie had hung around to clean up because mothering the lot of them was a compulsion she could never get rid of. Briggs would hang around to keep her company and feed her gossip from HQ while she scurried around him. Until it became too much, and he caught her at the waist and stopped her. She'd stare up at him for a second deciding whether or not this was a terrible idea; sometimes, she would walk away, and that would be that.

But sometimes, she would find herself up on her tiptoes, and - just this once - she would be reaching to meet his lips and they would steal kisses in the kitchen (on the couch, against the wall, perched on the stairs). Tomorrow morning they could return to the status quo.

It took Charlie a few years to realize that everyone else could see the way they revolved around each other, that she was his sun and he her moon. They sizzled and crackled together, like the moments before lightning hit, and their housemates knew enough to make themselves scarce, give the two of them a few minutes of privacy (in the garage, in the phone room, on the beach) because they were undercover agents, and Paul was still in love with a dead woman, and this was as good as it would ever get.


	4. Levi and Odin

**Chapter Four:**

Levi and Odin

Everything changed when Mikey moved in. Paul was his training agent - a first for Briggs - and there was something about Mike that just didn't sit right with him. Briggs studied Mike the way he would study a target, the way he watched for patterns and tells and detail.

Charlie found Paul coming to her at the end of the day more and more, and just sitting in her room to do paperwork. At first, he joked it off, "Gotta have a night off from the kids, honey," but it was something else.

Mike was watching Paul too.

At first, she didn't quite know what to do or what to say (or if there even was anything to say) because she was watching Mike too and the kid was good - he was a quick study - and she could see that it was getting under Paul's skin, and maybe that was all there was too it. She shrugged it off as his hero-complex getting in the way ("Quarterback syndrome," she once told him), and let him take up space in her room. She liked having him there anyway.

And then there was one night when he'd been staring at his laptop for a while and she'd been digging through files and out of the blue he said, "We gotta go back under."

At first, Charlie wasn't certain what he meant. "Back? Hun, we're undercover agents."

Paul scooted back from where he'd been leaning against her bed, and joined her on the mattress, pulling his laptop up with him.

"This is the file on Odin Rossi."

"Yeah, I know." She'd been watching that one for ages - it was in her case load, officially, though the lines of command in the house were a bit blurry, and she had recruited Paul to help her stare fruitlessly at the files.

He scrolled down the page. She saw it and sighed. "Quinn has his stuff."

"It's the only lead we've got."

The tense silence spoke volumes. Quinn knew them as Katie and Eric, and Katie and Eric of yesteryear existed in a very different space than Paul and Charlie did now. It was heavy in that moment of indecision, of weighing the consequences. Those 2am moments against the stairs were only okay as long as they went unacknowledged, as long as they sort of never really happened.

He took her hand and pulled her up to look at him. "What d'ya say, babe? Katie feel like having some fun?"

Oh, what the hell. "Only if Eric is up for a good time."

The Odin Rossi case was the clusterfuck of all clusterfucks, and that barely even counted the incident in which Quinn pulled a no-show and she and Briggs found themselves mostly naked on the dresser of a bureau-funded hotel room.

In the aftermath it was shockingly quiet; sitting on a bench outside that damn Federale's beach rental, Mikey and Paul leaning against the truck, chatting as if nothing had happened and Briggs wasn't in cuffs, she could feel the cuts on her chest, her face burning and the salty sea air was only making it worse and she couldn't tell if she wanted neosporin and a bandaid or to drink an entire bottle of rum while watching Miss Congeniality and eating Cookie Butter with a spoon from the jar.

And before she really realized what was happening, she was weeping, on that bench, and Paul and Mike's chit chat stopped and Paul was next to her, nuzzling her shoulder because he couldn't reach for her hand, and Mike was kneeling in front of her.

"Charlie, are you okay?"

No. She was not okay.

God, she wanted to hate him. Hate them both. Hate Mike for pushing, for being a rat. Hate Paul for running, for lying, for whatever the hell he had been up to that he had put her through this - and she was no closer to understanding what was going on, except to be certain that she had been hunting the wrong man, and the one she cared the most for was going down for it.

Whatever the hell Paul had done, he had come for her, had stayed for her. She had spent all these weeks chasing him, chasing him so relentlessly he actually broke out the go bag - the one he'd stashed in the early days of the house and she only knew because he and DJ had helped her plaster up her own before anyone else had moved in - and he had gone.

And she had chased him and chased that Odin Rossi ferrett - Paul or some mystery dude in a suit or some Mexican gangster - and she had put Whistler in harm's way and he was gone and she had done things that could get her bureau spiting ass in prison.

It was like she didn't know when to stop.

She was devastated, because Paul was her best friend and Mike was just a kid and Whistler was sweet and had so much potential, and she got into this business to put away the bad guys and take care of the good guys, and such destruction should never have been on the cards.

Charlie kept crying, ignoring Mike's gentle prodding, the feel of Paul's stubble leaning against her shoulder where it had been so many times before. Such destruction was always on the cards when Paul was working alongside her. She was so used to him, so blinded by him.

And there he sat in cuffs beside her, and Mike too, looking so kind, so sympathetic, like he hadn't just taken down his training officer but it was alright because the pair of them understood each other in some kind of sick mutual admiration that she didn't want to think about.

It was a whirlwind in the week before Mike left the house. His assignment was over, he was being promoted to the D.C. office, and they were all a little sad to see him go, and more than a little relieved. He had swept in like a tsunami and washed away all of their normal little routines, all of their sanity and sanctity and they loved him, but no one could keep on living like that. It was time.

The day Mike left, Paul dropped him off at the airport, picked up some In-N-Out at the drive through, and was waiting for Charlie on her balcony when she stepped outside for a smoke (old habits die hard).

"I have animal fries," he said, handing her the box and a pile of napkins.

She sat down, waiting for him to begin lecturing (she'd already heard it twice in the past week from the housemates), but he didn't preach. "You not going to ask me to put it out?"

"Hun, I've got no right to criticize." Only the blackest of humor for the blackest of days.

She tested a couple of the fries - still warm. He must have driven like Smoke to get them back here. God. And even after all this.

"I didn't know." She didn't mean for her voice to crack. _About the heroin. About Lisa._

"Babe, I tried to so hard to hide it…"

"No, Paul," she stopped him. "I'm your partner. You're my best friend. God… you even told me about… How the hell didn't I know? All this time I - "

He stopped her, grabbing her hand and stealing a fry from it. "Chuck."

They finished their meal in painful silence, the smoke from Charlie's cigarette swirling in the ocean breeze.

In the aftermath of the case there was pages and pages of paperwork to do - in duplicate, triplicate, countersigned by nearly everyone in the bureau it seemed. Charlie and Paul camped out on the floor of her room - his stuff was still in evidence so he'd been sleeping on whichever couch was closest - usually with coffee or beer or a bag of fries and worked together in silence, occasionally consulting each other on the details (Jangles - Agent Cortez had knocked Paul out cold just a little earlier than Charlie).

Charlie knew what Paul was doing - he was trying to make things better, trying to make her understand just by his persistent presence that he forgave her, that they were okay, that he was messed up too. She didn't know what to do with it though - no amount of his kindness cancelled out her fuck-up.

Two weeks after Mike left, Paul asked her to accompany him to a meeting. A Narc-Anon meeting.

"Why?" She asked.

"Because I trust you Chuck." There it was again.

She went, because she was still off field duty until her injuries subsided and she passed her psych evaluation (which she was avoiding until she could think about that horrible, messed up night without dissolving into tears). And it was good. She wished there was a support group for fucked up FBI agents with a twelve step program and anonymity and cookies and shitty coffee.

When they got home Paul parked the car but didn't move for the front door, taking her hand and walking her out to the sand with him instead. He took off his shoes and helped her take off her sandals, and they stood for a little while, under the moon, with their toes in the water and the calming sound of the waves and the wind swirling around them.

"Charlie," he finally said.

She didn't look at him. She couldn't.

"I should have told you. Everything, right from the start."

She couldn't move; the sand and the current were strong, and her eyes and heart were so tired. "Paul…"

"Catherine Demarco, I need you. In this house. In my life. I mean it. I want you to know that."

It didn't matter that she couldn't move and could barely breathe because she was standing in the sand with her best friend, his arms wrapped around her, her face tucked into his worn leather jacket. For once, she knew exactly what he meant.


End file.
